


Obsolescence

by MultiocularO



Series: Jon Sims Except He's An Avatar Of Literally Anything But Beholding [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Power Swap, Existential Angst, Extinction!Jonathan Sims, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Injury, Power Swap, Spoilers, Statement Fic, again kind of, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-25
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:29:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22396342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MultiocularO/pseuds/MultiocularO
Summary: “Alright. Um, Statement of…?”“Jonathan Sims. Or what remains of him.”“Regarding..?”“...a wind farm, I suppose.”
Relationships: Martin Blackwood & Jonathan Sims
Series: Jon Sims Except He's An Avatar Of Literally Anything But Beholding [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1611985
Comments: 21
Kudos: 252





	Obsolescence

**Author's Note:**

> oops here it is

Martin meets the avatar of the Extinction in an empty book store, on the outskirts of a huge, unfamiliar town. Except, it wasn’t an empty book store, and the town wasn’t huge. 

He’d been investigating several statements regarding the book store. The common thread was that, should they use the bathroom, they would exit to find an empty, degraded city. Sometimes, they encountered a man. Accounts of him varied. 

Martin was investigating, himself, because he was kind of short on assistants at this point. And it couldn’t hurt to stretch his legs, right?

The bookshop was small, and cozy, a converted home most likely. There was a woman behind the counter, with dark curly hair pulled up and large, dangling earrings. She asked him if he was looking for something in particular, he replied something vague about dystopia and inquired about the bathroom.

“Well,” she said. “If you really need to, but… it’s not been working too well recently.” 

“It’s fine,” he replies, wiping his sweaty hand on his pant leg nervously, “I won’t be long.” 

It’s down a narrow hallway, to the right. At the end of the hall, across from the bathroom door, is a long, narrow flight of stairs. A cord is tied between the banisters, bearing a sign that proclaims “Keep Out.”

Martin enters the bathroom. It’s modest, impersonal. Lilac walls and generic soap. He waits a couple of minutes, checks his phone, and washes his face. If anything, he can talk to the nervous cashier, maybe get a statement. 

When he dries his face off, it takes him a couple of minutes to notice the dingy, molding shade of the wallpaper. 

“Oh,” he says, “shit.” 

The door creaks as he opens it, but at least it opens. Belatedly, he takes out his phone and starts recording, holding the phone, and flashlight, at eye level. 

The staircase is even more ominous, half sunken in on one side. The walls of the narrow hallway are peeling and damaged, and it’s darker than before. 

When he enters the main part of the store, he realizes that it’s darker, outside. Closer to dusk. Light filters in through broken window panes, illuminating dust particles. Crumpled, soiled books carpet the floor, and the mangled remains of shelves block his path. 

On the counter sits a man, one leg crossed over the other. He smiles at Martin. Martin stares.

“You’re…?”

The man’s laugh was the cough of a car engine, the grating, grinding moan of machinery. He smelled like hot, wet metal, like cities in summer. A cigarette dangled from his lips, caught on peeling skin. 

“You  _ know _ who I am, Martin,” he said, voice the coarse wrasp of a habitual smoker. “You know  _ what  _ I am.” 

“The Extinction,” Martin says. The word, the being, springs to his head like a trap, snapping and crushing. His eyes throb. 

“Would… would you like to give a statement?” He asks. It feels right.

“...I don’t much like the thought of feeding your God.”

“Please,” Martin says, feeling a tug in his stomach. He’s not sure why he’s so desperate to get the statement of what was left of this man.

“...fine.” 

“Alright. Um, Statement of…?”

“Jonathan Sims. Or what remains of him.”

“Regarding..?”

“...a wind farm, I suppose.” 

“Statement taken directly from subject, August 5th, 2017, by Martin Blackwood, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute. Statement Begins.” 

“It was… early in my college years. My class took a trip to visit some museum, the name of which quite escapes me. We’d been driving through green, grassy hills, covered in wind turbines. It was midday. Always midday… 

Our car broke down. It was the middle of the day, on a weekend, but no cars passed us for hours. There was no service.

We took a vote, to decide who would go for help, and I was the unfortunate winner. I followed the road south for hours. It was midday. The wind turbines turned slowly, quietly around me. At some point, I noticed that the road had degraded. Rough asphalt, with cracks and holes, the paint faded beyond use. Grass and weeds spread through the road, taking root. It had clearly been that way for some time. 

My phone died. It was midday when I left the group, and midday when my phone died and midday when I realized that all that remained of the road was a few crumbling, dark shapes in the tall grass. When I turned around, I couldn’t find it again. The road was gone. My phone was dead. It was midday.

The wind turbines turned.

Always, always they turned. Slow, screeching revolutions around a long-dead motor. Rusted metal, stripped gears, frayed bands. But still they turned. A low, agonized moan filled the barren fields I walked, infiltrating every crevice of my mind. Even when I slept, the noise permeated. 

Friends and family opened their mouths to speak in my dreams and the only sound I heard was the wail of corroded metal. 

No matter how far I walked or ran, I couldn’t escape the turbines, or the hills of tall grass, or the midday sun. There was nothing in the world except the turbines and the hills and the sun, always the sun. And me.

And the beasts. 

The animals that roamed that roamed my high noon hell were strange approximations of the animals I had always known. Twisted, malformed. A child’s interpretation, or perhaps their nightmare. Their voices were the screams of steel, the groan of infrastructure. Their shapes were the shadows of cities and their eyes were windows lit by Franklin’s spark. 

I knew, somehow, that we had done this to them. They were not natural, they had not adapted or evolved to be this way, and they were no figment of my imagination. The scars on my arm prove that. 

I had been there for years, maybe. Or hours. Minutes. Time is meaningless when there is no structure. 

The thought did not strike me, out of the blue. It wasn’t an epiphany. It approached slowly, creeping on the outskirts of my consciousness like storm clouds on the horizon, brushing panic into the pattern of my thoughts with quiet regularity. 

This is what awaited us. 

Us, the humans. Our species. Our planet.

An empty world with strange, unfamiliar creatures. Like so many of our ancestors before us, the only remnants of our society, our time inhabiting this space, the crumpled, corroded remains of our technological advancements. 

As the full weight of this notion settled, I fell to my knees and wept, the remaining moisture in my body salting the earth. I wept until there was nothing left in me but the turbines and the hills and the sun and the beasts. 

And, eventually, the blissful darkness of sleep.

When I woke, it was evening. Above me towered, not a wind turbine, but a power pylon. Nearby, I saw the crumbling remains of a barn. If there had been anything left of me, I might have cried. Instead, I got up. I got up and I walked and I walked and I walked until I found, at last, a town. 

I was told later that I’d been missing for three months. It surprised me. I was sure I’d been there for years. I was suffering from severe dehydration, and malnutrition. I was sunburnt almost beyond recognition, and I had so many odd injuries. Some I remembered, some I didn’t. 

I never told them what happened. I never told anyone. Until… now, I suppose.” 

The silence that follows is oppressive, deafening. 

“Thank you,” Martin says softly. The man, Jonathan Sims, shakes his head. 

“Alright. I think… I think I’m done, now.” 

Martin blinks, and his reflection blinks back. His phone is in his hand. Three hours have passed. 

“Huh,” he says. His reflection says nothing.

* * *

The video he took was completely corrupted, but the audio survived. He added it to the Archive, and did the follow up himself:

Jonathan Sims, 29 year old English Major. He went missing, maybe seven years ago, and reappeared without a word. Then, two years ago, he vanished again. His grandmother refused to comment, and his ex-girlfriend only said to ‘leave well enough alone’. 

Martin steeples his fingers, thinking. 

If the other powers form alliances, then it only makes sense that Beholding would, too. He’s not looking forward to revisiting the dingy bathroom, but he didn’t ever end up getting that cashiers statement, after all….

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> i'm writing a research paper about alternative energy and i'm fed up with fucking windmills
> 
> my tumblr is @hermit-scribe-vibe, feel free to hmu


End file.
